Search on the Deathbed
+ When The Going Was Good, In Session and Sweet Incense Content
It’s time to rethink your search strategy, and that means rethinking analytics and how you think about web traffic as a whole.
Watch a reel on Instagram, and it counts as a view. On YouTube, it takes 30 seconds. Pageviews on a site can mean minutes spent reading a single page, or just a passing glance while scrolling. Ever since Apple started pre-loading newsletters in the Mail app, even open rates have become mysterious.
This isn’t a novel observation. For those of us in marketing, this is the terrain we navigate every day. Measuring how people use websites is flawed, and that’s before we even get into bot traffic.
Now to make this even more challenging, web traffic is down across the board, a one-two punch from the rise of TikTok and the sudden arrival of AI tools like ChatGPT. So, how do we measure how people are using websites now? How do we get a real sense of engagement, let alone build businesses around the metric of pageviews?
Let’s step back.
AI is destroying web traffic as we know it. Even if Google tells us to go eat rocks, AI tools are fundamentally changing how we use the internet and replacing search. Business Insider just laid off 20 percent of their team. In a note to employees, CEO Barbara Peng said, “70% of our business has some degree of traffic sensitivity. We must be structured to endure extreme traffic drops outside of our control, so we’re reducing our overall company to a size where we can absorb that volatility.” Meanwhile, in a recent interview with Dotdash Meredith CEO Neil Vogel on the Rebooting, Vogel calls this coming moment “Google Zero”. According to Vogel, over the last four years, Google traffic dropped from 60% to 33%.
Instead of navigating to pages, we’re being served summaries or asking AI directly for answers. Even before this shift, with TikTok and Instagram, we had already stopped searching the web. We now wait to be influenced by influencers and by algorithms. We are not leaving the app to find answers.
Every company that makes money from web traffic needs a new strategy…today.
If you’re a fashion or ecommerce brand, maybe that means building AI tools that let users try on looks virtually. If you’re a media company, your site, app, or newsletter needs to be good enough that people are willing to pay for it, because selling pageviews is a dead business model. If you’re in B2B, it means developing authoritative voices in your company who can build trust and visibility on platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube. Maybe it means creating an event series that flywheels content and creates real engagement with prospects.
Whatever your business is, you need to find ways to get people to your content without relying on search, because search is on its deathbed.
From there, build the metrics that match your strategy, metrics that measure what actually matters for you.
Good luck.
Reading This Week
When the Going Was Good is a quick dip in a cool pool and maybe the perfect summer read for those of us who are obsessed with all things media and New York.
Watching
I had the pleasure of interviewing Andy Cunningham, marketing and strategic powerhouse, Aspen Institute trustee, and a key player in launching the Apple Macintosh, for our latest In Focus video from the Aspen Institute.
Andy worked side by side with Steve Jobs and has spent her career shaping the stories of category-defining companies. In this conversation, she shares why the best leaders are the best communicators, how culture drives behavior, and why great leaders give their teams the freedom to execute.
Listening
This one should lift you up.
Recent Work
Friends of the program, Ask the Ages, just launched a new online shop for all things incense. I got to take a few photos for them. Do visit for all your incense needs.